My great great grandparents, Anastasio Pizzuti and Marianna Morga are listed on the 1911 Census as living at 14 Bolebridge Street, Tamworth, Staffordshire. They were part of a small community of Italians living in the area and their eldest son living at 16 Bolebridge Street. Living at 15 Bolebridge Street, Tamworth is another Italian family, the Petriccas.

All three properties are described as boarding houses. Not unusual at this time and their boarders are from all over the United Kingdom, Ireland and some fellow Italians.

We know that the families were involved with each other because our preliminary research had unearthed newspaper articles with reported incidents with both Pizzuti’s and Petricca’s mentioned.

We can only imagine the type of friendship they had….

Within genealogy there is a form of research called FAN, Friends and Neighbours. By looking a bit deeper into friends and neighbours you can find clues to connect some of the dots.

Taking this approach, I have joined several social media groups specific to the areas where we know our ancestors lived. One group that covers ‘Memories of Tamworth’, whilst scrolling through my feed one day up popped a picture of a lady that looked familiar.

We have a number of photographs of my great grandmother, Angela Maria, in her more senior years on holiday in Italy with another lady who is definitely older than her. We’ve, that is mum, me and two of mum’s cousins have looked at these pictures time and time again trying to work out who this lady is.

So back to the social media post, posted by a gentleman with the surname Petricca. Me being me, instantly messaged him to say I think our grandparents were friends, here is my number and this is what I am doing and it would be lovely to talk to you further about this, alongside a few of the pictures I had to back up my theory.

Mr Petricca called me the next day, confirming that is was in fact his grandmother in the pictures, yay!

He told me his grandmother’s name was Carmella (a name we had as a possibility for the face in the pictures), and yes, she had gone back to Italy, many times to the village that she was born in. Of course, I asked if he knew the name of the village, he wasn’t sure, but it may have been a place called Galinaro.

My genealogy senses were tingling…Galinaro is one the smaller villages that is close to my great grandmother’s home village of Settefrati.

Mr P was able to tell me everything that he could remember and sent me more photographs. He was very interested in expanding his knowledge of his grandmother and was I able to help. From the census we had a rough idea of Carmella’s date of birth, and now we had a possible birthplace.

The records for Gallinaro for this time period are held by Family Search, but only at one of their research centres. Luckily for us we have one, a ten-minute walk up the road, unluckily for me, I had to wait a full three days before it was open!!

Mum was actually the one to find Carmella’s birth certificate, Maria Carmella Franciosa, born 11 November 1881. Sat in the research room, so quiet you could hear a pin drop, mum started waving frantically, trying to get my attention on the other side of the room, I could see the excitement in her face. In a loud whisper she called me over “Quick, quick, look at the record, look” …I looked and my jaw almost hit the floor…. there it was – Maria Carmella’s mother was none other than my own great grandmother Marianna Morga! We had found another family member – Carmella my great grandmother’s half- sister and more information on Marianna, whom we had spent nearly a year looking at hundreds of documents to no avail – all we had was her name on Angela Maria’s birth certificate.

So, it turns out Carmella Petricca was much closer to home, more than just a friend and neighbour, more than we expected!!